Ghana government is not acquiring drones – Nsiah Asare

The Director –General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Nsiah Asare has refuted claims championed by the minority in parliament that government is acquiring drones to facilitate the work of the GHS.

According to him, the contract with Zipline International, manufacturers of the medical drones is strictly based on service performance.

Explaining the nature of the contract to the media, Dr. Nsiah Asare said the government of Ghana is not acquiring any drone as speculated, rather, Zipline is coming on board to manufacture specific drones for the Ghana Health Service.

“This is a revolution in the health care, this contract; Ghana government is not buying drones rather we have a performance-driven structured service agreement with Zipline and not procurement agreement”.

He added that government and the GHS will also not take charge of the maintenance or installation of the drones.

“The Ministry will only pay Zipline when they succeed in setting up the distribution centre and they meet our specifications,” he said.

According to him,the cost at the end of full deployment of one distribution centre is USD88, 000 per month which will be serving about 500 facilities, saying "so if even you want to strike an average and divide USD 88,000 by 500 every month then no facility will pay more than USD 175 per month for services fee" he added.

“If you want to quantify the amount of money that facilities pay in getting medicine from our regional medical stores or other centers, it is very costly, so this is a very cost-effective, efficient contract I have ever seen,” he said